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The Times Advocate, 2005-09-28, Page 66 Exeter Times–Advocate Wednesday, September 28, 2005 Opinion Forum News Seniors' perspective Continued from page 5 p.m. Note: Oct. 22, 3 to 5 p.m., music by Jim Ashby downstairs. • Steak dinner and dance Oct. 22; $20, dinner only $12, children under 12, $6, dance only $10; music by Jim Ashby. • Noon lunches: 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Oct. 14, Nov. 18. As of Jan. 1, third Friday of the month. • Duplicate bridge (bring your own partner) every Wednesday at 7 p.m. • Shuffleboard at the Exeter Legion Hall: shuffling will be every Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons beginning at 1 p.m. Note: Except first Tuesday of the month, then Wednesday and Thursday; everyone welcome. Contact Esther Hillman at 235-1167. For more information contact the Legion at 235-2962 or Harvey or Esther Hillman at 235-1167. Early bird 2006 membership dues for the Legion now due $40 from now to Dec. 1, then $45 thereafter. Once upon a time Once upon a time there was a prince who, through no fault of his own, was cast under a spell by an evil witch. The curse was that the prince could only speak one word a whole year. However, he could save up the words so that if he did not speak for a whole year, the following year he was allowed to speak two words. One day he met a beautiful princess and fell madly in love. With the greatest difficulty he decided to refrain from speaking for two whole years so that he could look at her and say, "my darling." But at the end of the two years he also wished to tell that he loved her. Because of this he waited three more years without speaking (bringing the total number of silent years to five). But at the end of these five years he realized that he had to ask her to marry him. So he waited anoth- er four years without speaking. Finally as the ninth year of silence ended, his joy knew no bounds. Leading the lovely princess to the most secluded and romantic place in that beautiful royal garden the prince heaped a hundred red roses on her lap, knelt before her and taking her hand in his, said huskily, "My darling, I love you! Will you marry me?" The princess tucked a strand of golden hair behind a dainty ear, opened her sapphire eyes in wonder, and parting her ruby lips, said "Pardon?" Back in style At an older couple's 50th wedding anniversary, the lady was showing her young granddaughter a photo album of their marriage ceremony. "Grandma, so many of these styles have come back over the years," the girl commented. The grandma never hesitated. "That's why I've kept Grandpa all this time," she said. "I know he'll be back in style again one of these days." Funding for Zurich Medical Facility Dear Editor: Mr. Bannister's letter to the editor Aug. 24 was informative, thank you, (a pleasant surprise after closed door meetings which kept the public in the dark). He stated that he knows a solution can be found to resume medical service in Zurich. I would suggest that an immediate, if not long term solution is in front of our noses. That is, don't fill the position left vacant with the departure of your previous executive director. There is no need (as I've been advised) for a full time executive director for such a small operation. In addition to his or her medical duties a doctor could be given a stipend to supervise the Grand Bend clinic. If my information is correct the $100,000 government allotment for the executive director would be adequate to offset Doctor Hurley's supervisory fees, the nurse practitioner Annie Morris and the office man- ager Brenda's pay, benefits and office rental costs. I have been led to believe that the funding shortfall was less than $100,000 to keep the .... medical team in Zurich. We believe the munic- ipality and all the other players, province, GBCHC involved doctors and local committees should forward a plan to the Minister of Health in the next couple of weeks. The longer we wait the more difficult it will be to get fund- ing for the Zurich medical facility. After someone or something is dead the survival rate is rare. We look forward to participating in a requested public meeting to be held hopefully sooner rather than later, to learn more about what is being done or what the public can do to save our medical facility. BOB FISHER Zurich Good advice, even for governments Dear Editor: Once again our council and administration have a fire to put out. It seems that we do not have a bylaw to deal with fencing other than those specifically for pools. South Huron has been a municipality since 2001 and we still do not have a complete set of building and zoning bylaws. We do not need to reinvent the wheel here. Many other municipalities have very comprehensive building and zoning bylaws. Pick one, post it on the municipality's website and start the process of requesting input from professionals (our contact information is on file) and the public for their input. We have had five Chief Building officials in the last four years. The current one has been with us for over a year now and he has stated he intends to clean up this town. This needs to begin at Town Hall. Get to work on putting workable policies in place in consultation with the citizens who will be able to help point out the many problems with the current systems and the solutions for these. Bylaws will only work if they are accepted by the citizens. If they are not, we will need to spend ever increasing time and money on enforcement and legal fees. As Mr. Pattison has stated during last week's council meeting, "You can build a fence 20' high." Town Hall: brace yourselves for the flood of neighbour disputes. Although given this public statement, bylaw offi- cers will be able to do very little about any projects started prior to the implementa- tion of a new bylaw. Our council is faced with the opportunity at this time to adjust the electoral make-up of South Huron. At the last council meeting, in their infinite wisdom, council deter- mined that they were doing a fine job with the status quo. The question of the cost and findings of a report prepared by the previous town engineers regarding flood controls was again presented by a citizen. A vague answer was given. Mr Morley has also stated on several occasions that the over -taxed sanitary system is the result of "illegal" hookups of perimeter drains. This is not entirely true, as prior to 1999 these connections, in the ward of Exeter, were inspected and passed by the Huron County Health Unit, which handles plumbing inspections for South Huron at great cost to homeowners. It seems that a good politi- cian these days is measured by his/her ability to avoid sticky questions and deflect crit- icism. This is ironic given that the measure of good government is openness, honesty and accountability. I question whether it is necessary to have so many telling us so little. The opportunity is available to reduce the size of council. Our taxes and fees continue to increase. Reducing operating costs seems a good first step to addressing this prob- lem. My grandfather once told me, "The key to saving is to watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves." Good advice, even for governments. Yours Truly, DEAN DUCHARME Huron Contractors Inc., Registered Home Builder South Huron District High School's goal is to promote success for all students EXETER — The annual University Information Program is being held Oct. 3, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Goderich District Collegiate Institute. This will be a very informative event for students planning to attend university next year, as all the uni- versities in Ontario will have representatives present to provide students and parents with information on the programs they offer. In past years this event has been held in the afternoon and we have encouraged Grade 12 students to attend. Because it is an evening presen- tation this year, we are also encouraging Grade 11 stu- dents and parents to attend. We have made arrangements for a bus to go to this event at a cost of $5 per person (parents includ- ed), and the bus is scheduled to depart from the school at 6 p.m. We must have a minimum of 25 students and/or parents on the bus to make it worthwhile: if we don't have commitments by this number of people by Thurs., Sept. 29, we will have to cancel the bus. Students and parents interested in taking the bus to this event need to let us know right away. Students were given this information last week. People often ask me how I am able to come up with topics for this column, which I try to write on a weekly basis. The truth is that topics often present themselves when situations come up at school during the week. Last week was a good example of this: I didn't really have a topic in mind, but a situa- tion Friday caused me to reflect on one of the balanc- ing acts we are expected to do at schools across this province. A major focus in the last two years has been "Student Success," where schools have been asked to do everything they can to help students be successful in school, particularly for students at risk of dropping out. My experience in dealing with the so-called "students at risk" is that it is often their own behaviours and atti- tudes that put them at risk of being unsuccessful in school. Schools and teachers clearly have a role to play in promoting positive behaviours and discouraging negative behaviours, but we can only do so much at school. There are far greater influences on student behaviour and attitude than teachers and schools: we need the support of parents and the community if we are to be successful in promoting positive behaviours. We will do everything we can at school to help students succeed, and our hope is that our efforts will be supported and reinforced out- side of school as well. Clearly the most important factor for most students is regular attendance at school: unfortunately, sometimes students do things that require us to suspend them from school and this is obviously not helpful to our goal of student success. Parents sometimes ask how we expect them to learn when they have been suspended from attending, and this is not an easy question to answer. While we do make homework available for suspended stu- dents, it is not the same experience as being in the classroom. And while I am not a proponent of suspen- sions, there are several behaviours for which I am required to suspend students from school under the terms of the Provincial Code of Conduct. This is another aspect of the balancing act, where we JEFF REAB PRINCI MESS URN PAL'S AGE must balance the needs of the individual student against the needs of the other students while at the same time following the rules set out in the Code of Conduct. Another aspect of our student success program is a credit recovery system that allows students who have failed a course to recover the credit by completing units or modules of the course, rather than repeating the entire course. This option is made available to stu- dents who came close to passing but were unsuccessful due to poor achievement on one part of the course, or the failure to hand in a major project or assignment. The option is not made available to students who did poorly throughout the course or to students who sim- ply didn't bother to do the assigned work. Again we do the balancing act as we weigh the opportunity to make up for poor achievement against the expectation that stu- dents will make an honest effort to be successful. We have to be careful the credit recovery is not perceived as an easy way to make up for poor effort: instead, we want students to recognize that a good effort is the best way to ensure success in the first place. Our goal is to promote success for all students and we will do all we can to help students succeed in school, but we can only achieve this goal with the sup- port of the parents and the community. We hope par- ents will encourage their kids to attend school daily, to do their homework, to prepare for tests and quizzes, and to hand in all assigned work. These simple steps are the keys to success, and if we can get all students to do them, we are guaranteed to have much greater student success over all.